Twitter’s VR program manager says he was fired over comments about homeless

Twitter’s Virtual Reality Program Manager Greg Gopman wrote in a Facebook post on Wednesday that he was fired from the tech firm hours after TechCrunch published a story about offensive comments he made about the homeless three years ago. In a 2013 Facebook post, which has been deleted, Gopman referred to the homeless in San Francisco as “degenerates,” comparing them to hyenas who “spit, urinate, taunt you, sell drugs, get rowdy.”

“They wrote a smash piece on me last night and comms didn’t want to deal with it,” he added in the comments.

Twitter hired Gopman as a contractor and he had been employed for several weeks, according to a source familiar with the matter. Gopman’s LinkedIn profile states that he started the job in October.

TechCrunch writer Lucas Matney questioned Twitter’s decision to hire Gopman on Tuesday night, noting that the company has been dealing with harassment issues.

“Given Twitter’s troll problem, you wouldn’t think they would hire someone for their VR program whose past opinions read like some of the worst of the company’s user base (albeit far more wordy than 140 characters can allow),” Matney wrote.

Gopman, who was the founder and former CEO of AngelHack, was working at Upload VR for less than a year before he was hired by Twitter.

“Working at Twitter was actually awesome. Much better than I expected. I worked on an incredible team and we were doing really amazing things. Yesterday we were flying. And now it’s all over. I still love them and wish them the best,” Gopman told TechCrunch after he was fired.

Photo: The Twitter building is photographed Dec. 14, 2015, in San Francisco, Calif. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)